REVIEWS: 2003
Media, Personal and Academic Reviews of Patrick Collins’ 'Goodbye Bussamarai: the Mandandanji Land War, Southern Queensland 1842-1952', UQP, Brisbane 2002.
Since 'Goodbye Bussamarai' was released by UQP in March 2002 it has been well received throughout Australia by both academic and media critics. The pages below include the most significant reviews for 2003. In some instances, Patrick Collins has commented on statements made in some of the reviews. Click here for Reviews for 2002. Patrick Collins has also added a five page paper that expands on his published conclusion that Bussamarai, a powerful Mandandanji military leader, was also known as Possum Murray, Eaglehawk, Old Billy, Billy and Combo. Click here for this paper.

Review by Dr Robinson: Patrick Collins, Goodbye Bussamarai: The Mandandanji Land War, Southern Queensland 1842-1852, University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia, Queensland, 2002, Pbk, ISBN 0 7022 3293 9, 305pp, $34.00.

   (A large section on Prof Ramsland’s text was omitted by P Collins here).

Collins deserves particular commendation for using many previously uncited primary sources in Goodbye Bussamarai and for successfully managing to capture 'the other side of the frontier'. He does not merely portray the Mandandanji as passive victims of European aggression but captures their initiative and creative reactions to European intrusion.

Australian Historical Association Bulletin No 96, June 2003, published the following review by Professor R. (“Bob”) H. W. Reece.

Professor Reece is now based at Murdoch University, Western Australia. His Aborigines and Colonists (Sydney University Press, 1974) remains one of the most authoritative texts on frontier conflicts in Australia. Accordingly, I feel honoured that he took the time to review Goodbye Bussamarai. My responses to some of his comments follow the review below. I gave particular attention to his perception that my writing was not directed by an “over-arching theory”, for I contend that it was. Secondly, I have spelled out the influence of Irish history and Catholicism on my conclusions.

Book Review: Goodbye Bussamarai: The Mandandanji Land War, Southern Queensland 1842-1852, by Patrick Collins. University of Queensland Press, 2002. 305pp. $34.00 Paperback. ISBN 0 7022 3293 9.

My personal link with Patrick Collins' subject goes back to 1964 when I was looking for an M.A. thesis topic in the old Brisbane Archives. The dusty files of the Queensland Native Police evoked the bitter frontier violence in central northern New South Wales and what is now central southern Queensland in the late 1840's and early 1850's. Behind the euphemistic official formalese of ‘insurgent blacks’, ‘serious depredations’, ‘collisions’, ‘dispersals’ and ‘punitive measures’ was the story of how a squatter­-dominated colonial government set up and supported a highly mobile and well-armed para-military force designed to ‘pacify’ the indigenous peoples of the area and ‘settle’ it for permanent pastoral occupancy. Never mind the explicit instructions from Earl Grey that pastoral leaseholds were ‘not intended to deprive the Natives of their former right to hunt over these districts, or to wander over them in search of subsistence’ : the rush of squatters and their servants from the Liverpool Plains and the Darling Downs after 1847 quickly dispossessed and depopulated the Bigambul, Mandandanji and other indigenous groups by sheer force of arms and with great bloodshed.

What was being played out here, it seemed to me, was a last-ditch Colonial Office attempt to enforce the policy of safeguarding native interests introduced by Lord Glenelg ten years earlier against settler interests for whom imminent self-government meant an end to the ‘canting hypocrisy’ of Exeter Hal (the influential Evangelical humanitarian lobby). My response was to go back in time little and see how things had reached this sorry state, to explain how the one remaining intervention on the part of the colonial government could take the form of squads of Aboriginal troopers, led by European officers, who waged an officially-sanctioned war against indigenous landholders on the pastoral frontier. Inevitably, I had to confront the events at Myall Creek and other stations on the River Gwydir in the late 1830's and their repercussions.

And resistance there was to white settlement. Whatever may have been the case in other parts of Australia, the Maranoa was one big battleground. Patrick Collins has provided plenty of evidence to show that Europeans were tolerated as travellers (as Major Mitchell had been in 1846) but not as a permanent and disruptive presence. Just how disruptive that presence was in economic terms can be gauged by the description of Alan MacPherson’s sheep and cattle occupying fifty kilometres of water frontage on Muckadilla Creek, a northern tributary of the Balonne River, to a distance back from the water of twelve kilometres. And it was the deaths of eight of MacPherson's workers which helped to trigger off what must have been one of Australia's bloodiest frontier wars. There were no official body-counts to satisfy today’s forensic empiricist. Nor is the official documentation very revealing. Native Police Commandant Frederick Walker had to tone down his official despatches to the Colonial Secretary in Sydney after an incautious remark about his force’s pitched battle with some hundreds of Bigambul at Carbucky station following the deaths of a number of white hands on the Wallan and the Lower Condamine in July 1849: ‘1 much regretted not having one hour more daylight and I would have annihilated the lot, among which were six murderers and all the rest living solely on cattle . . . ' According to William Telfer, a drover who later worked in the area, ‘nearly one hundred perished under the sword and bullet of the white man’.

 Telfer's accounts of this and other battles and massacres of ‘station blacks’ in what is now known as the Wallabadah Manuscript might be dismissed as hearsay but there is a significant congruence (allowing for some slight chronological error) between his descriptions and events which are only briefly sketched in the official record. Incidents of this kind would have been campfire talk for many years afterwards and the numbers of Aborigines killed may well have been inflated. Nevertheless, the Wallabadah Manuscript was written by a disinterested party only ten years afterwards. The narrative is impressive (and all the more credible, in my view) in its unadorned and dispassionate simplicity. If the sceptic insists that Telfer's evidence fails the eye-witness test that is now being applied to events which few were prepared to record at the time, there is the graphic account by Margaret Young, a squatter's wife, of two visits to their Umbercollie station near Carbucky after the vengeance killing by Aborigines of two white boys by James Mark, an evident psychopath who had gratuitously killed an Aboriginal messenger. The first, by Mark himself and his men, involved ‘shooting every native in sight, even our station aboriginals. Even my house gins, one of which was my faithful Maime, my loyal friend’. The second was by the Native Police:

Some weeks later the police came back shooting still more natives whether guilty or not - we lost twelve more of our station blacks. Two young gins ran to me for protection. I hid them up ... in our roof... they were there to stay for two days and nights without food and water. The police were still in and out of our house ... after the police had gone from the last shooting, we faced the terrible sight of so many dead natives and this time wild dogs had joined the [wild] pigs tearing the bodies to pieces. Once again Jonathan had the job of burying them.

The second half of Collins’ book is more difficult to follow than the first and one or two chapters might well have been omitted. The story of the Native Police and its complicated politics, together with long disquisitions on Gideon Scott Lang and Roderick Mitchell, serve to obscure the relatively clear narrative line maintained earlier. The focus on frontier warfare is sometimes almost lost in a wealth of documentation. The geographical area of study expands beyond easy grasp.

Patrick Collins is a psychologist, not an historian, by training, and his professional interest has been in group dynamics. He says that he avoided contact with historians and anthropologists and preferred to come to his subject via the writings of people like Eric Berne and Claude Steiner on the links between history and ‘effective psychology’. The significance of this is not clear, but he certainly immersed himself in the primary resources for what seems to have been a long labour of love. The empirical basis of his work is sound and it would be churlish to complain of the absence of any over-arching theory. However, he tells us nothing about the group dynamics which made Bussamarai's leadership possible and very little about the psychology of the squatters and their often n'er-do-well servants. It would have been useful to be told more about the original size of the indigenous population and what latter day anthropology can suggest about its economy and its social organisation. Instead, there is a wealth of narrative detail which sometimes leaves the reader reeling. This is a local history, but it is the history of a very large area, upon which is superimposed the history of the Native Police. And the maps provided are not clear enough to be very useful.

An interesting conceit which Collins raises in his Introduction is the congruence in experience of the Irish and the Aborigines and their consequent affinities in colonial Australia. The story of Paddy McEnroe, the 1798 rebel, and his Aboriginal ménage at Mount Abundance is a fascinating one. He seems to have found a unique rapport with the Mandandanji at a time when the entire district was on the verge of desertion by the whites in the face of their hostility. However, there is no good reason for excepting him from the campaign of vengeance waged earlier by his employer, Alan MacPherson, and the policeman Jack Durbin after the killing of the former’s servants. At a broader level, Collins’ suggestion that inaction over the Cheat Famine in Ireland and failure to protect Aborigines from the squatters of New South Wales both exemplified British ‘frugality’ is not very convincing, either, but there can be little argument with his statement that ‘different British governments allowed British citizens to take over and to profiteer from Aboriginal and Irish land’.

From another perspective, sometime in the distant future, the regional conflicts will almost certainly form the core of consensually shared Australian legends. Heroes from both sides will be warmly remembered and their deeds will be as celebrated as those of Brian Boru and Robert Bruce. If this should be so, the regional struggles between Indigenous Australians and the settlers can validly be compared with events such as the Anglo-Norman invasions of the ancient Celtic kingdoms.

Re: Aborigines and Colonists by R.H.W. Reece: In the “Introduction” (p. xix) to Goodbye Bussamarai, I credited Professor Reece with being one of “the most significant” “amongst influential historians [who, during the 1970’s] exposed the infamy of nineteenth-century Australian racial conflicts”. Another from this group was Prof Raymond Evans from UQ, whose assessment of Goodbye Bussamarai, led to its publication.

Returning to Prof Reece, his Aborigines and Colonists (1974) is a “must read” for serious students of conflict history in this country, particularly re Governor Gipps’ term, 1838-1845. Appropriately, in Waterloo Creek (p.733), Roger Milliss referred to Reece as the “author of the seminal Aborigines and Colonists”. Rightfully so, as Reece’s book dealt with many of the issues that Milliss developed some years later. It is therefore with due deference to Prof Reece that I risked copyright infringement and published the full text of his AHAB review. As the complete text of the AHAB review is above, the reader can form his/her own opinion about the strengths or otherwise that Prof Reece has mentioned. I will not comment on aspects that he viewed favourably, except to say that I am thankful for such recognition and to confirm that it was “a labour of love”.  I will, however, comment on some sections of the review that were not positive.

Maps: I agree that some of the maps are too hard to read. This was simply an artefact of the page size chosen by UQP. When I realised there was a problem during the editorial period, I brought this to UQP’s attention and they did increase the page size, but unfortunately not enough. Accordingly, larger copies of all maps in "Goodbye Bussamarai" have now been reproduced on this site: see Menu. Please feel free to download any of these maps, which will print as A4 copies. Copyright is however retained by the author.

Content:
Leadership Versus Influence: I stand by my claim that Bussamarai’s area of influence extended as far west as the Warrego River. The evidence I cited from Hovenden Hely is sufficient to verify this. In group dynamics (and everyday English) the term “influence” means to change another person’s beliefs, feelings or behaviours. If, in so doing, we assist that person (or a group) to achieve his, her or their goals, our influence is termed “leadership”. However, “leadership” is not synonymous with “the leader”. Bussamarai influenced Aborigines who lived west of the Mandandanji. He therefore exhibited leadership in that region, but he was not their leader. On the other hand, as he influenced the Mandandanji, the Barunggam and the Jiman, and to a lesser extent the Bigambul, to unite against the squatters, he was a leader of these people, especially the Mandandanji.

Native Police: I was unaware that Prof Reece had delved into Native Police archives as a “Masters” student. If the focus of his MA was this infamous corps, it is Australia’s loss that it was not published. This in turn makes it difficult for me to accept that Reece thought that I went into too much detail on Commandant Walker and his Native Police. I did so as, apart from Les Skinner’s Police of the Pastoral Frontier and some journal articles, there is a dearth of in-depth information about this force, which ultimately destroyed life for the Mandandanji. Skinner however did not explore many aspects covered in Goodbye Bussamarai. For similar reasons, I do not know how a history of the Maranoa frontier would be complete without studies of Gideon Lang and Commissioner Roderick Mitchell.

Psychology and “the absence of any over-arching theory” [of history]:  Although not obvious to Prof Reece (and some others), I did interpret what I learned via over-arching theory, but it was not theory that is typically drawn on by historians and/or anthropologists. The essential elements of this comprised:

1.     Eric Berne and Claude Steiner’s notions about “scripts”: 
   Scripts are essentially pre-written roles that others have taught us. History can help us to identify the origins of many: eg “racist”, “sexist”, “religious bigot” and so on. Some modern-day scripts might include, “Neo-conservative”, “extreme left-winger”, “politically correct” and others. To live a scripted life implies that we act out “parts” unconsciously. Once our scripts are identified, we can choose to accept their central notions and assert these, or we can choose to dump them as inappropriate for the lives we wish to lead. Eg there is a vast difference between being a “religious bigot” and being an enlightened Christian who tries to live a life based on identified Christian values. In Goodbye Bussamarai I drew particular attention to the script of the “immoral ruthless competitor”, as acted out by many frontier squatters and their henchmen. I also drew attention to Aborigines who responded as moral and also ruthless competitors, but I did not present this as scripted behaviour. Their resistance to white settlement was understandable and appropriate. It was in fact similar to the resistance that our soldiers exhibited in World War II.
2.     George Kelly’s notions about “personal constructs”, especially as written of by Bannister and Fransella: 
    To Kelly, a “personal construct” differs from a “concept” in so far as it includes that which is rejected as well as that which is accepted. Eg, a definition or concept of racism identifies racist behaviours etc. However, a personal construct of racism includes related behaviours etc that we reject. Eg, my personal construct of racism, does not include giving special treatment to those who have experienced racism. However there are some who regard this as racism or “reverse racism”. A second major aspect of Kelly’s thinking is that personal constructs function as unverified, often naive scientific hypotheses. If, for instance, a person concluded (as many did) that the Irish and/or the Aborigines were inferior to whites, she/he applied that conclusion as if it were fact. There are clear links between unverified constructs and scripts. Historical truth, if it is disseminated, can therefore play a major part in identifying destructive scripts and equally destructive unverified personal constructs.
3.     Group norms:   “Group norms” are the rules (not necessarily written down, or even identified) to which we must conform to maintain membership of a group. Such norms can be either constructive or destructive. In Goodbye Bussamarai I stressed that immoral ruthlessly competitive squatters conformed to some norms that were very different from the norms of their moral contemporaries. In other words, to reject the actions of the former does not imply the rejection of all nineteenth century white Australians. Eg the norms of some frontier squatters (and many of their station hands), allowed them to rationalise the rejection of Earl Grey’s and Governor Gipps’ protective policies. Other rationalisations applied in later eras. Aborigines were soon defined as the enemy. Murder, rape, land-theft and cultural destruction were all justified by the norms of this frontier group. These norms were far more destructive than those of many pastoralists who acquired stations in the post-frontier eras. This does not excuse any destructive actions by the later group, but they cannot validly be equated with the frontier die-hards. From a different perspective, other group norms now possibly prevent many Indigenous Australians from “owning” their European ancestors and vice versa.
4.     Aboriginal nations: The notion of what constitutes “local history” is debatable. The important issue is, anthropologists (not to mention living Indigenous Australians) have verified that different large groups of traditional Australians identified with different regions. Understandably, this identification can at times be divisive: for instance, within ATSIC in recent times. Accordingly, there are sound reasons for historians to record the history of each region in detail. This is probably self-evident to most people, but many regions have yet to receive detailed coverage, which obviously extends beyond the limited period (1842-1852) covered in Goodbye Bussamarai.

I attempted to combine all of the above in Goodbye Bussamarai. However, I make no apology for my relative ignorance of anthropology and, therefore, a dearth of related content. My intention was to present the frontier facts of East Maranoa and adjacent regions in such a way that any interested person, regardless of race, could use those facts for self-understanding, and as part of reconciliation process. Whether or not individuals will examine their scripts and the validity of their personal constructs is out of my control. As with any personal change, this will only come about when the need arises. Having said that, I will illustrate how this process operated in my own life. I hope the following is not intrusive but it is relevant to why I drew on Irish history in Goodbye Bussamarai.

Some readers have concluded that I pushed the Catholic barrow in Goodbye Bussamarai, especially in the “Introduction”. Perhaps I should have declared that I have been an atheist since I was a pre-teen. Also, I was automatically excommunicated from the Catholic Church for marrying a Methodist in a Methodist church. From that day, the majority of my Catholic relations have not wanted to know me. My naïve reaction was, “bugger the bigots: who needs them?” However, my attitudes became more accepting from reading Eric Berne’s and Claude Steiner’s books on scripts. These, and texts on Irish history, taught me the constructive part that the Catholic Church had played in uniting the Irish against the British. It is true that many priests took the English shilling, but there were others who were genuine leaders. Many Protestant Irish, such as the Tasmanian exile John Mitchell, also took leadership roles, but my problem was with Catholicism. My turning point came when I learned that my Irish forebears, including those who migrated to Australia in the 1850’s and later, were regarded as inferior beings by the British and by many Australians also. Learning that most devout Irish Catholics had previously been ordered to live beyond the Shannon added to my empathy, as did learning that many had been massacred by Cromwell and his followers. Land theft, the banning of the Gaelic language and the withholding of education added to this. But all of this was capped by the starvation of a million Irish during the famine of the late 1840’s, when another two million migrated, mostly to the USA. As has been written by others, it is true that the potato crop failed, but it was the British who created the famine, by allowing life-saving food to be exported from Ireland. Also, under Lord John Russell, financial assistance was limited to token levels. So what am I saying?

I have never felt enmity towards living English persons nor towards living Protestant Australians: rivalry towards the “Poms”, yes, but not enmity. Also, I have never been molested by a Catholic. I simply rejected the constraints of Catholicism, perhaps with irrational passion. By taking the time to understand its place in history and in my family members’ scripts, including my own, I removed an albatross from my life. Accordingly, I believe other historical insights could remove a lot of unwanted Albatrosses that flew in on the winds of Australian frontier conflicts and later.  I do not believe that this alone will solve this country’s racial problems. However, I find it difficult to accept that Indigenous and European Australians will ever build all the necessary bridges to harmony, if ignorance of history is accepted.

Re legends of the future: I confess that my comments re “consensually shared Australian legends” is a desire without supporting evidence. However, in late 2002, I was pleasantly surprised during a talk that I gave to some Mandandanji at Roma. One of these, Russell Kelly, who believes he is a descendant of Bussamarai, expressed great interest in Paddy McEnroe also. I was left with no doubt that Russell would like to discover that Paddy was another of his ancestors.

Patrick Collins.

Response by Patrick Collins to Prof. Bob Reece's review of Goodbye Bussamarai in Eureka Street (Jesuit Press), September 2003.

"Books on frontier conflict in Australia must now be written with an eye to the charges Keith Windschuttle has made about the deliberate 'fabrication',

or at least exaggeration, of Aboriginal deaths. There is no harm in this: unusual care must be taken in an area of such politicised sensibilities. At the same time, the paucity of hard evidence creates serious problems for historians genuinely convinced by a combination of circumstantial evidence and tutored instinct that large-scale killings of Aborigines took place. Patrick Collins' book is amongst other things a case study of these problems. It also tends to support the argument pursued by Henry Reynolds, Noel Loos and Raymond Evans that Queensland witnessed what was probably the most extensive and intensive racial violence in Australian history."

"the coroner may admit any evidence that the coroner thinks fit, whether or not the  same is admissible in any other court, provided that no evidence shall be admitted by the coroner for the purposes of the inquest unless in the coroner's opinion the evidence is necessary for the purpose of establishing or assisting to establish any of the matters within the scope of such inquest.”

Quadrant magazine (editor Padraic P. McGuinness) published the following review by Robert Murray in Vol XLVII, No 7-8, July-August 2003, pp.34-38, in an article titled “On the Long Road to Truth”.  Robert Murray is “an occasional contributor to Quadrant.

The cover of this edition included the following line: “Robert Murray on post-Windschuttle frontier history”. The article included reviews of two other books, Frontier Conflict: the Australian Experience (Editors Bain Attwood and S.G.  Foster, National Museum of Australia, 2003, $39.95; and Mark McKenna’s Looking for Blackfella's Point: An Australian History of Place, University of New South Wales, 2, $39.95).

The following extracts are from a review of Goodbye Bussamarai (UQP, 2002), the second of the three reviews in Robert Murray’s article.

    Again the Native Police are the culprits, though Collins points the finger at squatters who wanted them to act as "private hit squads" …

    The economic imperatives carried the decisive weight.
   
    Once a pastoral run was rendered "safe" the value of the lease shot up,
   
    A breed of frontier-hardened stockmen, familiar with Aborigines, and mostly ex-convicts, operated these early runs and often helped the squatters establish them.
   
    High­minded sentiments flowed out of London about the need to protect all British subjects in the colony, irre­spective of race, but they tended to get lost or over­looked on the long route to the Balonne and neighbouring river valleys.

    The census count in 1851 showed a white population of only eighty-five, of whom eleven were women. Some seventeen whites were counted killed in fifteen months of 1848-49 alone.

    Collins, suggests that the Mandandanji people of the Balonne-Maranoa were genuinely resist­ing the squatters and protecting their way of life, under an apparently charismatic elder, Bussamarai.

    These were still musket days, and Collins is not as clear as a Windschuttle would like about how damage on the scale he suggests could be inflicted with these limited weapons, on blacks able to flee or sink into dense scrub in their own much-loved country.

    A Windschuttle might also think it a but much to damn Fitz Roy and his London bosses so much for weakness, given the near impossibility of quickly rais­ing, equipping, training and motivating a police force.

    Although Collins shows the greater sympathy to the Aborigines, they are mostly shadowy, almost disembodied. Perhaps inevitably, the book is mainly about the whites, who left the written records.

    The author, a psychologist in his day job, offers some interesting points about the psychology on both sides.

    The many pages of references in all these books show the industry that has gone into them, which would rarely be possible without the academic resources that have supported the first and last. Some of the records were not even available until thirty sears ago, a few of them probably deliberately mis­laid. (Other possibly incriminating ones seem to have disappeared altogether.) All three have required painstaking work from frequently obscure records.

    None of this would have been practical without postwar prosperity and the money it has made avail­able for scholarship generally. Previous generations with access to these funds could hardly be blamed for Building careers on more readily accessible records. This partly explains why historians steered clear of his subject when easier work was to be had. It is a pity these fortunate later beneficiaries are so snooty about the failings of their predecessors and the dreaded "conservative commentators".

     Robert Murray.
 

I am absolutely delighted that Quadrant published Robert Murray’s review. I am far from being a fence-sitter but, as stated in the “Introduction” to Goodbye Bussamarai, I avoided involvement with historical and anthropological groups. This was not because I do not admire many historians and anthropologists, for I do, including Henry Reynolds, Raymond Evans and W.E.H. Stanner. My aim was to avoid being influenced by the norms of such groups. This was in keeping with the experiences of many psychologists with so-called “T-groups” and similar. A problem with group involvement is that we can unconsciously (to find acceptance) conform to group norms, both stated and covert, that we might otherwise reject. Accordingly, I gathered my data and drew my own conclusions, especially from primary sources. In other words, I tried to produce a book that reflected the records, rather than either a left or right wing interpretation of those records. I do however acknowledge the influence of  a Native Police researcher, Simon Whiley, who regularly emphasized the value of primary records. It is also appropriate that I mention that UQP accepted Goodbye Bussamarai for publication in May 2000, some months prior to the start of the so-called Windschuttle debate. However, UQP had held the manuscript since mid-1999. Keith Windschuttle has some strengths and weaknesses, but he did not influence the writing of Goodbye Bussamarai.

So far as Robert Murray’s review is concerned, it is very perceptive and contains nothing with which I take umbrage. In spite of my tendency to incorporate more factual content than “imagination”, he obviously took the time to internalize what I was saying. That he did not concur with all of my conclusions is his right and it adds to the quest for truth. I will however comment on some of his comments.

Murray refers to the deaths of seventeen whites above. The context suggests these were all from the Maranoa. However, only ten of these deaths were from the Maranoa. The others were from the more populated Lower Condamine in the outer Darling Downs.

It is true that muskets were slow to reload and had a short lethal range. However, the Native Police troopers and many of the white people also had pistols. How the troopers used these or their cutlasses can only be guessed at.

I have no qualms with academics being financially enabled by salaries and grants to research and write texts. This has always, in my lifetime, been the situation. Today’s lecturers however, do not automatically qualify for sabbatical leave as did lecturers of yesterday. I therefore do not accept that any historians who taught me during the early 1960’s had any excuse for not discovering the many primary records that were then available. I have never had a writing grant, nor have I received paid research leave. I did teach and counsel (mainly on contracts) at the BCAE and the QIT prior to my early retirement in 1988. However, I retired on the profits of my wife and my investments, not superannuation. With time on my hands I indulged myself in doing the things I could not do as a younger person: Goodbye Bussamarai is therefore the product of a very costly seven year love affair.

Finally, I must emphasize that many of my apparent conclusions are little more than restatements of comments made by the historical figures mentioned in my book. For instance, it was the Native Police Commandant, Frederick Walker, not me, who stated that several Aboriginal tribes combined to rid their lands of white settlers. It was Gideon Lang and Hovenden Hely, not me, who stated that “Old Billy” (Bussamarai) led the majority of attacks on the settlers. The multiple mass killings I refer to are from primary documents. And so on. If I did make unwarranted conclusions than so be it: others will soon set the record straight.

 Patrick J Collins.

The following extracts are from a review published in Australian Aboriginal Studies 2002/2, pp.89-90.

Goodbye Bussamarai: The Mandananji land war,
Southern Queensland 1842-1852,
Patrick Collins. R
Reviewed by Neville Green, research historian and author of Forrest River Massacres, Cottesloe, Western Australia, marnev@cygnus.uwa.edu.au

    Patrick Collins' book makes a valuable contribution to the current debate over the extent of frontier violence. It is also a useful pastoral history of southern Queensland ...

    It not just another history of violence. Collins has been meticulous in researching the early explorations and leasing of vast estates that were legalised by the Wasteland Acts of 1842 and 1846. But, as Collins observes with some sadness, the clause in these statutes that gave Aborigines legal access onto pastoral leases, insisted upon by the Colonial Secretary Earl Grey, was ignored from the outset by the colonial administration and the pastoralists.
The title, Goodbye Bussamarai, refers to a little known figure of history. For most of the book he is one of hundreds of nameless people who lived, fought and died for their land in southern Queensland. The choice of Bussamarai is explained in the introduction. He was the only named person, white or Indigenous present in the region throughout the ten years of what Collins described as the Mandandanji Land War. On the Australian frontier, European settlers had names, while the Aborigines beyond the station boundaries were nameless figures, and within the boundaries they were given names of the squatter's choosing. Nearly all the Aboriginal men and women who died or moved away in this tragic decade are symbolised in the one name: Bussamarai.

    For the professional reader the book is thoroughly referenced, well indexed and has an excellent bibliography. Events are seen through the eyes and journals of different characters, some eyewitness, some hearsay, some reliable and some suspect. And all from the side that had much to hide. Even Collins had difficulty sorting fact from fiction and after a while the uncertainty becomes a distraction. Also, without a chronology of violent encounters or a table of some sort, it is difficult for the reader to follow these events when the same story is told from different sources.
Patrick Collins carries into his history his great­grand parents' Irish demons. He sees parallels in the persecution and dispossession of the Irish and the Aborigines. The concept is interesting except that the Irish were part of that violent frontier. They were also, as Collins shows with Paddy McEnroe, sexually active amongst the Mandandanji women. There was no ethnic division of good or bad Europeans. If they didn't actually commit crimes against Aborigines, they were part of the conspiracy to conceal them.

    Books such as Goodbye Bussamarai bring to mind the view of a few historians who believe that war memorials across the nation could carry a simple inscription to acknowledge those who died in warfare in Australian as well as those who died on foreign soil. Until it is accepted that the Australian frontier was a war zone, reconciliation of the past with present will continue to be an elusive goal.
 

Response by Patrick Collins:
I am very thankful to Neville Green for his many positive comments, some of which are included above. I was particularly pleased with his discussion of the symbolic value of Bussamarai's name in the title. Nothing would please me more than to see it on a monument in the Maranoa. So far as Neville's reservations are concerned, they are all have validity. A chronology such as that in Milliss's Waterloo Creek, would have made reading easier. So far as his comments re my Irish demons are concerned, there was irony in his associated comment: Neville's ancestors were also Irish. That aside, nothing changes. Other than revealing the truth, as I discover it, I cannot undo the effects of what Paddy McEnroe or my ancestors did, which hopefully was far less damaging than the violence of the frontier squatters.

Overland No.170, March 2003, published Dr Bill Thorpe’s review of Goodbye Bussamarai, together with a small copy of the cover. Overland at www.overlandexpress.org is said to “have a tradition of publishing hard-hitting articles that shed new light on issues of public concern”. Dr Thorpe is “a visiting fellow and adjunct senior lecturer at Flinders University of South Australia”. He is author of Colonial Queensland: Perspectives on a frontier society, UQP, 1996.

Some extracts from Bill Thorpe’s review, together with responses by Patrick Collins follow.

    “If ever a book could convince those who forget or deny the facts about the often bloody and violent way in which Australia was ‘settled’ ........it would have to be Patrick Collins’s account of the ‘Mandandanji homeland’ ...

     “Collins’s regional study is the most detailed and scholarly reconstruction of the sites of conflict, violence and fatal encounters between Aborigines and settlers ever published about the Queensland frontier and, to the best of my knowledge, for Australia...”

    “Goodbye Bussamarai is both a history and an exemplar of historical method....”

    Dr Thorpe’s long review included other very positive comments together with his reasons for forming his conclusions. He also had “three reservations”. He was not convinced that the title was appropriate as Bussamarai “is a somewhat fleeting presence”.

Secondly, he thought the book was one in which “documentary positivism almost overwhelms narratives and events”: qualifying this with, “This latter judgement is probably more of comment about this reviewer than Collins.”

    Thirdly, “Collins never fully develops in his analysis his counselling and psychological insights ...”

    Dr Thorpe also commended “the publishers and those who recommended Goodbye Bussamarai’s publication”. The full review is of course available from Overland, who can be contacted on their web site above.
 

Author’s Response to Dr Bill Thorpe:

As Goodbye Bussamarai is my first book, I admit to having felt a little awe-struck when I read Bill Thorpe’s review. To have received it from a very successful historian was all the more pleasing. Having said that, I was a little surprised. Unknown to Bill Thorpe, I learned a great deal from his Colonial Queensland, eg. from his chapter titled “Postcolonialism, Australian S/studies and the “social-material”. I also drew on his knowledge of a notorious Queensland premier, Arthur Palmer, and his white “kinship connections”. However, it is to Bill Thorpe’s credit that he did not ‘take umbrage’ over my reporting a minor error he made re Native Police. Errors of fact are inevitable when writing history. I have already learned of some in Goodbye Bussamarai (see “More Info” in the menu). The important issue is, it is sufficient to correct these ASAP without resorting to pejoratives such as “fabrication”. Bill Thorpe took the feedback and got on with the job at hand.

I was particularly pleased to have received such positive feedback about what Bill Thorpe referred to as “scrupulous empirical spadework”, as I tried to do this over a period of seven years. This was a luxury in which I was able to indulge as a direct result of taking early retirement. If I was successful in achieving this, it casts some doubt on the academic requirement to “publish or perish” that imposes restrictions on the vast majority of academics, who could produce more impressive major works if only they had the time without the pressure.

Dr Thorpe’s three reservations:

1. The title: Other reviewers have also queried my including Bussamarai’s name in the title, as the elder does not feature throughout the text. This is true but only because of a lack of records. In reality, Bussamarai would have been omnipresent on the East Maranoa frontier but I was not prepared to fill in the gaps by speculation.

2. Re “Occasionally documentary positivism almost overwhelms narratives and events”. I agree totally with this. Put it down to inexperience on my part. I could have, for instance, made more use of superscripts and associated endnotes.

3. Re a shortfall in my “analysis” using my “counselling and psychological insights”: How far to take this was a dilemma for me. I was, for instance, familiar with Michael Sturma’s article on Vietnam, which is mentioned by Dr Thorpe. This is acknowledged in my “Bibliography”. Also, an early draft of Goodbye Bussamarai included a great deal more psychological content than the published version. However, and rightly or wrongly, I accepted feedback from a manuscript assessor who suggested that I cut back on this. I guess I played it safe and essentially confined the psychological input to group dynamics, especially the effects of group norms in producing conforming behaviour on the part of group members: primarily the frontier settlers and the absentee overly-competitive squatters. Perhaps, as suggested by Dr Thorpe, others will add to this. I hope they do.

The Journal of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland (editor John Kerr), published the following review by Dr Ruth Kerr in Vol 18 No 5, pp.239-240, February 2003. Ruth Kerr is the author of "John Moffatt of Irvinebank"  in North Queensland. She has published seven other books on various aspects of Queensland history.

Book Review: 'Goodbye Bussamarai: the Mandandanji Land War, Southern Queensland 1842 -1852'
by Patrick Collins
(St Lucia, University of Queensland, 2002) (xv + 302 pages, maps, biblio, endnotes, appendices, index, Price: $34)

The following are extracts from Dr Kerr’s review. The full review is available in the above edition of the JRHSQ: E-mail: rhsq@queenslandhistory.org.au

    “It is delightful when one encounters a serious book on a most significant subject critical to Australia's understanding of their culture, that is written from the best sources. Also of significance and value is that the author tests the motivation of the characters of this human story of the conflict of the Mandandanji with the initial white intruders, using these sources.”

    “... the effort taken to read and assess the primary sources is the portent for a rich harvest of historiography of indigenous and colonial pastoral history on the rangelands of southern Queensland beyond the silver tails of the Darling Downs. “

    “I hope influential Australians in indigenous politics and legal fields do respect the author for his selection and perseverance with the sources. Nevertheless, there are some shortcomings in the book. Pat's selection of some secondary sources and assessments of evidence disappoint as they are based on far lesser standards of evidence than Pat otherwise uses.”

    Dr Kerr also listed the following shortcomings:

• “Footnote 47 on page 8 is not a sufficiently valid source for the statement that Aborigines did not have chiefs - viz. the Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales publication, Poignant Regalia: 19th Century Breastplates & Images (1993).

• Page xxiii - What proof is there that no squatter / lessee lived on a Maranoa station until Paddy McEnroe did on Ukabulla in 1851? None is given.

• Page xxiv - What proof is there that Walker sought to protect the Aborigines' access to land, while also being very brutal?

• The print on the maps is too small.”

    Dr Kerr’s summary comments included
“The result is a sense of historical honesty in reconciling people and sources to present a sobering picture as a model for future such analyses.”

For more details see www.qld.historians.org.au/KerrR.html

A “Google”search using “Ruth Kerr” will provide other information about her.

It must be obvious that I am delighted with the above review: especially with the comment, “The result is a sense of historical honesty in reconciling people and sources to present a sobering picture as a model for future such analyses.” Considering the current debate generated by Keith Windschuttle, I hope that Goodbye Bussamarai is influential in this regard.

I also appreciated Ruth’s list of perceived shortcomings, above and make the following responses to her comments.

Re no resident squatters in the Maranoa prior to Paddy McEnroe: I did not provide much evidence re this in the text but this is available on request.

Re Walker protecting Aboriginal access to land but also being very brutal: I provided detailed evidence of this in a private communication to Dr Kerr, who now accepts that it is in the text.

Re print size being too small: I totally agree and will gladly provide larger copies of any map upon request.

Were there Chiefs in Aboriginal Society?
Dr Kerr objected to my citing a secondary source (Poignant Regalia) to support my statement (p.8) that, “Aboriginal groups did not have chiefs (or kings).” I must confess that I deferred to authority on this issue as I have no formal qualifications in anthropology and the above text was by Tania Cleary, formerly “The Aboriginal Collections Manager, Division of Anthropology, Australian Museum”. The text, which was published soon after I began my research, doubled as a catalogue of Aboriginal breastplates. Accordingly, it directly addressed the issue of so-called chiefs and/or kings. Cleary stated (1993, p.19), “In Aboriginal society there were no kings, queens or chiefs – laws were made by a consensus reached by a council of tribal elders … … As in all societies there were often those of dominant character whose influence held sway, but in general elders shared equal status and were highly respected.”

I must continue to defer to authority. However, I did explore this issue in a number of texts without citing them: perhaps I should have. I will refer to a sample of these below, followed by references to Aboriginal “chiefs” in some early publications by writers who claimed to have a sound understanding of Aboriginal society. With one exception (Flanagan, 1888) I will quote only from texts listed in the “Bibliography” of Goodbye Bussamarai.

Prof A.P. Elkin (1964/1970, pp.76-77) stated re “The Local Group”, “This group is ideally an enlarged family, consisting of a man and his living descendants. … Such a group is a local patrilineal clan … “Each local group has its headman, usually the oldest man, provided that he be not too old to take full interest in its affairs. The headmen of the various groups of a tribe constitute a council-informal in nature-who talk over matters of common interest and make decisions, when several local groups are together…”

Richard Broome (1982, p.20) stated, “… Aboriginal society was one governed by those who had consistently proved themselves to be the most wise and dedicated to the continuance of the group and its traditions. There was no leader but a more egalitarian diffusion of power among perhaps a dozen men.” Earlier on the same page Broome stated, “… some women also came to have a say in camp affairs in their later years.”

Frederick G. G. Rose (1987, pp.129-168) wrote at length on “The Patrilineal Land-owning Local Group.” Rose stated (p.148), “… if the numbers of the local group increased too much it would become unwieldy, as the number of “elders” would become impracticable for them to come together and achieve a consensus on the “administration” of the local group’s territory. The local group, that is the “elders”, were not only decisive in the use of the land but also in such matters as marriage and initiation (in these cases in consultation with representatives of other local groups).

If I have not been overly selective in my choice of quotations, the only term from the above that could be interpreted to mean “chief “ or “king” is Elkin’s “head man” of a patrilineal clan. Some writers from the nineteenth century were no more definite.

Finney Eldershaw, who included a chapter on the Aborigines in his text (1854, pp. 76-107) stated (p.95), “There are as far as I have been able to discover, no Chiefs, nor hereditary superiors, in any of the tribes; the only influence amongst them being exercised either by the old men-who not infrequently assume supernatural attributes; that is to say, an unusual power of inflicting evil; or by those whose superior activity of intellect, or probably physical power, entitles them by force of arms to this position.

Gideon Lang (1865, p.27) who wrote a great deal about Bussamarai under the name of “Eaglehawk”, referred to him as a “diplomatist and a general” but never as a “chief”. When discussing leadership he stated (p.7), “The system of [Aboriginal] government is administered, in each separate tribe, by a council of old and elderly men.” With reference to the Maranoa (p.9) he referred to “the old and chief men” but not to an individual “chief”.

Roderick Flanagan, whose The Aborigines of Australia (1888) I did not include in the bibliography, stated (pp. 16-17), “The supposition that no system of chiefship prevails among the aborigines receives authority from many facts,” some of which he then listed.

Conclusion: The above small sample supports but does not prove my statement based on Poignant Regalia (1993, p.19) that “Aboriginal groups did not have chiefs (or kings).” However, I have no vested interest in maintaining this conclusion if it is wrong. Accordingly I invite any interested (but informed) person to comment on this issue. To do so, please select “Email the Author” from the menu at the bottom of this page and send your evidence to me. Alternatively, write to me C/- Queensland University Press, Box 6042, St Lucia, Qld 4067, Australia. Unless asked not to, I will add well informed comments to this web site.

A review of Goodbye Bussamarai by Ian Crawford, was published in Australian Historical Studies, April 2003, Vol 121, pp.189-190.

Australian Historical Studies {Email ahs-history@unimelb.edu.au] is a refereed journal dealing with Australian, New Zealand and Pacific regional issues. First published in 1940, it is now one of Australia's oldest and best known academic journals, receiving contributions from leading academics in the field. The journal welcomes contributions bearing upon any aspect of the Australian past, including the recent past. Australian Historical Studies is published biannually by the University of Melbourne in April and October each year and is supported by the Faculty of Arts. It is also supported by the Faculties of Arts of Monash University, La Trobe University, Victoria University of Technology and the Faculty of Art, Design and Communication, RMIT.

Ian Crawford is a prominent West Australian historian. We Won the Victory, published 2001, is an account of contact between the indigenous inhabitants of the north-west Kimberley and various intruders—fishermen, European explorers, pearlers, pastoralists and missionaries.
 

The greater part of Ian Crawford’s review is a perceptive and much appreciated annotated précis of the content of Goodbye Bussamarai. I appreciate his stating that “the book is a valuable contribution to the history of Aboriginal dispossession", but I feel I should comment as follows.

I did not state that Lieutenant Fulford was a psychopath but I can understand why Ian formed this conclusion. Fulford was a rather pathetic failed squatter, who turned to the Native Police and the grog to find some meaning to his life, which came to an end soon after Bussamarai died.
I do not understand why Ian commented on a lack of anthropological input, given that I stated in the introduction that I did not have the competency to do this. Of more importance to me however is, Ian quoted me as saying, “I do not feel guilt for the actions of past generations”, but omitted that I prefixed this with, “I support the notion of an apology.” My point was, and still is, I do not take the blame for what others did, including my own ancestors. However, I do believe reparations are in order. My personal contribution includes Goodbye Bussamarai, which took seven years to write. To me, such books are in some ways more constructive than the memorial to Bussamarai that I proposed.